Hostage of Paradox: A Qualmish Disclosure

A profound odyssey of a young college graduate who enlists in the military to avoid being drafted, becomes a Green Beret Airborne Ranger,and is sent to Vietnam where he is plunged into high-risk, operations under contract to do CIA—work for which he was neither specifically trained nor psychologically prepared, yet for which he is ultimately highly decorated. A Pulitzer Prize entry. More

Simply the best Vietnam narrative I have ever read.—Tom Perry, Producer

Few people then or now know about the clandestine war that the CIA ran in Vietnam, using the Green Berets for secret operations throughout Southeast Asia. This was not the Vietnam War of the newsreels, the body counts, rice paddy footage, and men smoking cigarettes on the sandbag bunkers. This was a shadow directive of deep-penetration interdiction, reconnaissance, and assassination missions conducted by a selected few Special Forces teams, usually consisting of only two Americans and a handful of Chinese mercenaries, called Nungs. These specialized units deployed quietly from forward operations bases to prowl through agendas that, for security reasons, were seldom completely understood by the men themselves.

Hostage of Paradox is the consistently visual first-hand account by one of these elite team leaders. Moore is a highly decorated former Green Beret sergeant whose operations led him and a few Chinese, with whom he could barely communicate by hand signals alone, through a labyrinth of excruciating close calls and multiple woundings, miles deep in the jungles of enemy-controlled wilderness. His descriptions of these little-known missions crackle with fearful immediacy and the vivid imagery that only someone who has lived the experience can summon. To read his words is to be transported to the shadows of a small, murky corner in America’s military history. It will not soon let you go.